The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE EQUINOX of this incoherent anticipation of the rest of my story. I should raise no sympathy in your heart by whimpering over myself. It is true that I am inclined to run riot in self-lamen- tations ; but great men always are. And I shall try henceforth not to give way to that unwholesome tendency. I have much already to be forgiven. In my cage, then, to resume, I was just passing from a state of dreadful mental agony to a more settled and hopeful disposition. For the second time the man-who-had-lost-his- cover left me alone; and I felt more relieved. He will never dare, thought I; and, after all, he does not look such a cold- blooded murderer. His eyes indicate some sort of inner life and his tone and voice are gentle at times. It is a joke, a mystification. . . . It must be. Thus I tried to deceive myself, and I must admit that I utterly failed. Looking, then, around my prison, I began to feel a very peculiar sort of numbness coming over me. It was almost like intoxication, and I am not in the least ashamed to say that I know what intoxication is. Iwas drowsy; my head seemed to weigh as heavy as if it contained lead in place of the keenest brains. The coffin appeared to mea most comfortable bedstead, and the skull a soft pillow. A horrible attraction bent me towards the box, and in a moment I lay, stiff, snoring, over the eight compartments. There is here a blank in my memory. Under the influence of a powerful narcotic, I was cut out and planed to fit the coffin exactly. About that time my tormentors must have been interrupted, for they forgot to nail me on the coffin, and the cage was hurriedly put on a motor and carried somewhere on 364